by Larry Niven
“True safety will beget confidence,” Vesta chided. In the new government, he continued to lead Clandestine Directorate. “Our priority must be stronger defenses. And we must search for ways to reconstruct the valuable archives Nessus destroyed.”
Curse Nessus, Achilles thought. And Louis Wu, too. The jail break was only Wu’s latest outrage.
Meanwhile, the squabbling for resources continued. The Minister of Industry proposed to create new jobs for those needing distraction. To the same end, the Minister of Education advocated new learning opportunities. The Minister of Housing sought resources for an apartment-to-apartment search for the billions of Citizens still unaccounted for. The Minister of Agriculture sang urgently about returning grain shipments to normal. The Minister of Transportation asked how and when the stolen grain ships would be repatriated from New Terra.
“We will get those ships back,” Achilles chanted. “Vesta, I want ideas how to motivate New Terra to—”
“That is a bad idea,” Chiron sang flatly.
The new Minister of Science participated by hologram and these were his first notes of the meeting. Around the table, necks wriggled sinuously in surprise. Who was this newcomer, this unknown, to contradict the Hindmost so bluntly?
But Achilles knew. His secret master beyond the hologram, behind the artificial intelligence, must be obeyed. “Back to the matter of priorities,” Achilles sang mildly.
Around the table, ministers and subministers glanced at Chiron with curiosity and sudden respect.
Achilles swallowed his rage. “Hermes, we should hear more about your proposal.”
And while the Minister of Information sang on and on, Achilles let his thoughts drift to matters that could transpire beneath Ol’t’ro’s notice. Truly urgent matters. Matters that would fill him with happiness. He would find Nessus and Louis Wu.
And they would suffer as greatly as Baedeker now suffered.
Awakened in the middle of the night, hastily dressed, a few personal items crammed into his pockets, Louis went with a squad of stern-faced men and women to . . . he did not know where. Someplace nondescript. Wall displays gave no clues to his location. His abductors wore ordinary clothes but bore themselves like soldiers. For lack of a better term, Louis decided he was in a safe house. Had he been allowed to keep his pocket comp, he guessed it would not operate any of the stepping discs here.
Neither in the hotel room from which he had been taken nor in this blandly enigmatic confinement had his captors answered any question beyond, “I am not allowed to discuss that.” He found the living room, lay down on the too-short sofa, and waited for someone who would explain.
Something woke Louis. Rustling. Two of his captors, springing to attention. Sigmund Ausfaller striding into the room. “Dismissed,” Sigmund said, and the soldiers left.
“What the tanj?” Louis demanded, sitting up. “After all I’ve done for New Terra, you’re arresting me?”
“Protective custody. I’m truly sorry.” Sigmund sat on the leather ottoman across the room. “There was no time to argue.”
“I’m here now. How about explaining?”
“The short version? There is a bounty on your head, a fortune if you’re killed and a lot more if you are delivered alive. The same for Nessus.”
“Achilles.”
“Achilles,” Sigmund agreed. “He’s not happy with you two. And trust me, the word is out. Every criminal, hard-luck case, and lowlife on the planet is looking for you.”
“You plan to lock me in this—wherever I am—forever? That’s unacceptable, Sigmund.”
Louis had become pretty good at taking care of himself. He would take his chances. If he had to, he would learn to put up with bodyguards. Eventually Alice would come home and—
“Tanj! Alice. The baby.”
“Leverage to get at you,” Sigmund said. “You would all have to hide. And in time they’ll still find you.”
For the first time since emerging from the autodoc on Aegis, Louis felt his true age. Felt ancient. Felt the weight of worlds on his shoulders. At the same time the confusion of his childhood crashed down on him. “I can’t abandon my own child. I won’t do it.”
Sigmund said, looking miserable, “A child who never knew you won’t miss you. All that anyone on New Terra knows about you and Alice is that she threw you out. If you never see her again . . .”
“Then no one need ever know it is my child,” Louis completed unhappily.
“You know what you have to do,” Sigmund said. “I’m sorry. Truly.”
Leave New Terra. “Then Alice leaves with me.” Louis swallowed hard. “If she’ll come, that is.”
Sigmund stood, crammed his hands in his pockets, and began to pace. “Forget for a moment that Alice will be gone for months and you are in danger now. You and anyone with the bad fortune to be near you when the shooting starts. Do you have any idea what you would be asking Alice to give up?
“Louis, I hate this, I really do, but there are things you need to know. You think you and Alice love one another. Maybe you do. But apart from hyperspace conversations, you’ve known her for only a few months. So how much about her do you know?”
“Who the hell are you to judge—”
“Be quiet and listen,” Sigmund barked. “Alice and I have been friends for over a century. Did you know I pulled her out of stasis, from a derelict ship the Outsiders had been carrying around for even longer? No? Then don’t be so sure you know everything about her.
“She woke up to a new life here—pregnant by a lover torn from her old life. I watched her get past that, and it wasn’t quick or easy or pleasant. Yet for the sake of the short time you two have had together, you would ask her to leave children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.”
Could Louis ask Alice to give up her whole life on New Terra? To go where? Alone, into the unknown. Or back to Known Space, their memories wiped. They would not even know each other. . . .
Louis shuddered. Every choice was impossible. But one choice was hardest only on him. He said, “It’s time for me to go home. Alone. Help me contact Nessus.”
52
No matter the urgency of the mission, Alice’s life had narrowed into dull routine: med check in the autodoc; stasis; message-queue review; repeat. She did not expect anything consequential to happen until she reached the Gw’oth home system.
And then the hyperwave message from Sigmund arrived, and within it the recording from Louis.
Louis was gone forever.
And Sigmund had encouraged Louis. For her good. For the baby’s good. Damn them both. Damn their impeccable logic. Didn’t she deserve any say? She was simultaneously enraged, touched, and heartbroken.
Somewhere, she knew, Louis must be suffering as she did. She suddenly could not bear to be alone. She left her cabin, trembling.
A passing crewman stopped and stared. “Are you all right?”
She glanced down at her belly, her pregnancy beginning to show. At Louis’s baby.
“No,” Alice said, “but I will be.”
Nessus plodded up and down the stairways and curved corridors of his all-but-empty, yet-to-be-named, new ship. Plumes of pheromones trailed in his wake. Virtual crowds, murmuring unintelligibly, kept pace in the wallpaper. Neither comforted him. Stepping discs would have whisked him anywhere aboard, but even if he had had a destination in mind, why bother to save a few paces? Whole empty years stretched before him, soon with only a Jeeves for company.
So far they had barely spoken. Jeeves was an everyday reminder of Voice and his uncertain fate. An everyday rebuke. Another weight on Nessus’ conscience. . . .
He discovered Louis in the relax room, seated at the fold-down table, an untouched meal in front of him. He did not look up.
Nessus said, “Just you and me. It seems like old times.”
“I’m lousy company. Sorry.” Louis slid away his plate. “I’m not happy how things turned out, Nessus. Not at all.”
The Concordance, betrayed. Bot
h their lives shattered, and their loves abandoned. Their mere presence a lure for Achilles’ wrath, an intolerable danger to everyone and everything they held dear. No sane being could be happy. “I set us an impossible task, Louis.”
“We completed several impossible tasks. Every accomplishment made matters worse.” Louis laughed bitterly. “The law of unintended consequences is harsh.”
“As you say.” The guilt was almost more than Nessus could bear. But with a small lie, at the cost of a bit more loneliness, he could ease Louis’s suffering. “I came to tell you, it is time.”
Louis looked at his meal, grimaced, and stood. “Fine. Let’s get this over with.”
They walked in silence to the cargo bay in which stood the Carlos Wu autodoc. With nanotech precision, it had recorded Louis’s pre-adventure engrams. It was the ideal device to do what must now be done.
Louis raised the dome and disrobed. “Nessus . . .”
“Yes, Louis?”
“You have been a good and true friend. Remember that for both of us, because soon I won’t be able.” Climbing inside the intensive-care cavity, he paused. “If somehow I can make things better, somehow atone for all that has happened . . . come get me. Use me.”
“You have been a true friend to me, as well. Now, please lie down.”
Louis lay flat and hit the activation button. As the dome closed, he said, softly, “Good-bye.”
Nessus induced sedation and initiated the memory modification routines. Then—even though at least forty days remained before he and Louis would part ways—Nessus set off, lonelier than ever, to finish his final preparations.
And once Louis was sent on his way? Other than staying far from the Fleet and New Terra, Nessus had no idea.
Nessus paused in the doorway to look back. “Until we meet again, my friend.”
EPILOGUE
With a struggle, Louis Wu opened his eyes. He saw a wall of instruments. He closed his eyes to try again, and forgot what he was doing.
When next he opened his eyes—much later, to judge from the aching ear and the kink in his neck—the instruments remained sideways. He was clearheaded enough this time to notice his head was down on a shelf. Whatever this was, he was studying it sideways. As through a fog, laughing at himself, he sat up.
Too fast. His head began to spin and he almost threw up. The room went dark. . . .
The next time Louis woke, his thoughts were clearer. Cautiously, he opened his eyes. Navigational instruments. At the center of the console, an inert mass pointer. Make that a pilot’s console. The “room,” tiny though it was, was the bridge of a starship!
“Let’s find some hair of the dog that bit me,” Louis muttered. The urge seemed more learned than a bodily craving. Odd. Usually, it worked the other way around. He searched the drawers under the console shelf for emergency medical supplies. He eventually found bandages and antiseptics. No painkillers.
Where was the crew?
He got up, gingerly, from his seat: a pilot’s crash couch. He barely had space to turn around. When he managed, intending to leave the bridge and find the crew, he found only two narrow hatches. The first was for a tiny closet that held a pressure suit. The suit looked like it would fit him. The second hatch opened into a cupboard-sized room that apparently served for sleeping, eating, recreation, hygiene, and exercise. The access panel in the multipurpose room’s rear wall revealed a hyperdrive shunt, thrusters, cabin-gravity generator, life-support gear, and a fusion reactor. As far as he could tell, the ship had only the two small cabins.
Louis had never heard of such a compact starship.
Somehow, he was the crew.
Every alcoholic, painkiller, and recreational-drug option on the synthesizer had, inexplicably, been disabled. Tanj, but his thoughts were fuzzy! Before crashing from his last fix, he must have jiggered the synthesizer so he couldn’t hit again. A workable substitute for willpower. He had to settle for a bulb of strong coffee. He returned to the bridge, sat, and let the caffeine do its job.
This was a one-person ship. He was the one person. So where was the ship?
According to the navigational instruments he was nowhere near anything familiar. Twenty light-years from . . . he stopped to think what he last remembered. Wunderland. Twenty light-years from here!
“What the tanj are you doing, Louis, two months or more from Wunder—”
His name was Nathan. Why was he calling himself Louis?
Louis Wu.
That was right. He was sure, somehow. Another long-lost memory recovered from a drug haze? Straining, he thought he remembered an orphanage. And an older sister!
Whatever. He was once Louis Wu. And since Wunderland’s aristos wanted Nathan Graynor, it was time for a change of names.
This would make more sense if he remembered planning to change names. How long had he been on the pills before he cut himself off? How long until the last of the drugs was out of his system?
He struggled to focus. There had to be a way to make sense of being alone, in a very expensive ship, in the middle of nowhere. The scattered images he retrieved almost seemed like someone else’s memories. But that was nonsense, his mind on drugs.
Step by step, he connected the dots. Smuggling med supplies to Wunderland. Shot down. Rescued by the rebels. Wounded during the rebel ambush. Waking in the makeshift hospital.
After that, things got fuzzy. The pills, of course. Way, way too many pills. After the ambush, he had only nebulous, almost secondhand memories. Fled the rebel camp. Made his way through dense jungle to a city. Had the . . . surgery?
Another rush of not-quite memories. Louis went to the other cabin and, his hand shaking, found a mirror. He looked about twenty years old!
A rebel sympathizer: that was it. Now Louis remembered: a cosmetic surgeon had helped. That, and given Louis a dose of boosterspice. A really potent batch, apparently.
He returned to his reconstruction. Addiction. Flee the rebel camp. Surgery. And . . .
And steal this ship!
Louis laughed. The aristos were leeches. Whatever they owned, they had effectively stolen first. Louis’s conscience was clear, and it would remain clear when he sold this amazing little ship—the ultimate singleship—to some wealthy Belter. For an obscene amount of money.
With that cheerful thought, Louis set to work synthing a hearty meal.
Stars sparkled in his view ports as Louis laid in a course for Sol system. Two months in hyperspace, plus however many normal-space sanity breaks he decided to take. Two months and a bit until he sold this ship. Two months and a bit until he settled into a mundane, comfortable existence.
He looked at his instruments. He looked out the view ports at the unblinking stars, and the patterns reminded him where he was.
He reentered his course, on a heading straight away from Sol.
After everything he had been through, surely he deserved an adventure he would actually remember.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Larry Niven has been a published writer since 1964. He has written science fiction, fantasy, long and short fiction, nonfiction, children’s television, comic books, and stranger stuff. His books, including many collaborations, number somewhere around sixty. He lives in Chatsworth, California, with Marilyn, his wife since 1969.
Edward M. Lerner worked in high tech for thirty years, as everything from engineer to senior vice president. He writes hard SF, from near-future techno-thrillers, most recently Fools’ Experiments and Small Miracles, to far-future space epics like the Fleet of Worlds series with Larry. Ed lives in Virginia with his wife, Ruth.
ilter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share
